THOMAS CARLYLE, the Scottish historian and essayist
(1795-1881), wrote that history is the essence of innumerable biographies and
indeed it is the minutiae of everyday life that gives us a glimpse of the way it
was in past times. The men and women who were the movers and shakers of their
day are recorded only in the dusty documents and fading newspaper files of
centuries gone by and although their worthy connections and their passing is
usually recorded in some detail, there is little chance of getting any more than
a glimpse of their everyday lives, their friends and families.

The more intimate relationships that reflect character and personality seldom
find a place in history unless they are described in letters or diaries but
these are rare in the history of Bourne, perhaps because literacy was less
widespread and fewer people could write with clarity. We are therefore left with
what we have, mostly official records and fictitious accounts by historians for
those who made their mark in earlier centuries and public records for those who
came after although as we move into the 19th and 20th centuries, things began to
change and we are able to obtain more information about the great and the good
than hitherto.

The main criticism of this book will be about those who have been left out and
this is not that they have been overlooked but because I have confined these
lives to just fifty, leaving the opportunity perhaps to add another fifty in a
few years’ time although those who have come after do not seem to be quite so
interesting as those who have gone before.

Brief Lives is published by Bourne Civic Society
with a cover price of £14.99 and all proceeds go towards the society for future projects and the
maintenance and upkeep of the Heritage Centre.